Short Stuff: Origin of Math Signs

Stuff You Should Know

iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture

4.6 • 79.3K Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2023

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Have you ever stopped mid-pencil mark and realized to your astonishment where the plus sign came from? Then this one’s for you.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	In 1995, Detective Tony Richardson was trying to figure out who killed a fellow officer.
0:11.5	The case comes down to who is believed and who is ignored.
0:15.8	Oh my goodness, we did connect to Innocent Man.
0:19.1	I'm Beth Shelburn from Lava for Good Podcasts.
0:22.6	This is Ear Witness.
0:24.9	Welcome to Ear Witness on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your
0:29.9	podcasts.
0:30.9	Hey and welcome to the short stuff.
0:37.8	I'm Josh and there's Chuck and this is Short Stuff and we are going to talk about something
0:42.2	that has been overlooked for far too long, which is the origins of the plus, minus, multiplication,
0:49.6	division and equal symbols.
0:51.6	I thought this was really cool, by the way.
0:53.9	You put this together with help from FASCO, Caltech, Science, ABC, among other places.
1:01.8	I had never thought about this stuff because I'm not a math person, but I love origin stories.
1:06.8	I thought this is really neat, especially the fact that these symbols came about to begin
1:12.4	with because before they had these, you wrote out a math problem like this long word
1:21.8	problem.
1:23.2	It's not like a train is traveling in this direction kind of thing.
1:27.0	It's more like I have divided 10 into two parts and multiplying one of these by the other.
1:32.3	The results was 21.
1:34.5	Then you know that one of the parts is thing and the other is 10 minus thing.
1:40.2	Right.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from iHeartPodcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of iHeartPodcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.